Newstatesman...

the immigration problem

No one knows for sure how many people would come to live in a
rich country like Britain if border controls were abolished. But in
many poor parts of the world, in Africa in particular, there has
been rapid urbanisation without industrialisation or economic
growth or job creation. That has created a large surplus of urban
labour well connected enough to know about the possibilities of
life in the west and with a miserable enough life to want to get
there. Who could say confidently that 5 million or 10 million
people would not turn up in the space of a couple of years,
especially to a country with the global connections that Britain
already has?

The American academic Dani Rodrik plays a game with his
economics students, asking them whether they would rather be
poor in a rich country or rich in a poor country (where rich and
poor refer to the top and bottom 10% of a country's income
distribution). Most of them opt for being rich in a poor country.
But they are wrong, at least if you just look at incomes. The poor
in a rich country are, in fact, three times richer than the rich in a
poor country, defined as that top 10% and not just the tiny
number of the super-rich. That means our economic fortunes are
primarily determined by what country we are born in and not by
our position on the income scale. Being born in a country such as
Britain, or being able to get here from a poor country, means
winning the lottery of life.

It is hardly surprising that so many people are battering on our
door to be allowed in. But allowing them in, at least in large
numbers, not only creates conflict with poorer people in rich
countries but slows down the development of poor countries.

A few countries, such as the Philippines, have become part-
dependent on exporting people to rich countries and benefit in
many ways from the process. But they are the exception. Most
poor countries are actively hostile to permanent emigration. And
it is hardly surprising. Desperately poor countries cannot afford to
lose their most ambitious and expensively educated people. Phil
Woolas, Labour's former immigration minister, recalls a meeting
with the Sierra Leone foreign minister in 2008 in which she said:
"Your country has just given me 150m to invest in
infrastructure, and I am very grateful for that, but the trouble is
that 90% of our graduates are in the US or Europe. Can you do
anything about that for me?"

Emigration from poor to rich countries is obviously an economic
benefit to the individuals and their families a doctor from Ivory
Coast will earn six times more in France, and a Chinese junior
lecturer can earn five times more in Australia. And the cost of
"brain drain" from poor countries is partly mitigated by the
remittances sent home. Annual global remittances are about
$160bn more than twice foreign aid flows and a big chunk of
GDP in some countries.

But just as rich countries can become over-dependent on
immigration, which then reduces the incentive to improve the
training or work ethic of hard-to-employ native citizens, so poorer
countries can become over-dependent on emigration, which
provides a flow of remittance money but slows the "take-off" to a
more productive economy.

There is a particular concern over the importing of skilled health
staff by rich countries. Malawi, for example, has lost more than
half of its nursing staff to emigration over recent years, leaving
just 336 nurses to serve a population of 12 million. Rates of
perinatal mortality doubled from 1992 to 2000, a rise that is in
part attributed to falling standards of medical care. Excluding
Nigeria and South Africa, the average country in sub-Saharan
Africa had 6.2 doctors per 100,000 of population in 2004. This
compares with 166 in the UK, yet about 31% of doctors practising
in the UK come from overseas, many from developing countries.

There is nothing morally objectionable about Britain refusing
entry to skilled people from poor countries, or insisting that
students or temporary workers from such countries return home
after their visas expire. Indeed, if people return to their country
of origin after a few years in a rich country it may produce the
best outcome of all, a remittance flow followed by the return of a
more skilled and worldly citizen eager for change. But this
requires a reliable and well-funded immigration bureaucracy in
Britain that commands public confidence something that the UK
Border Agency can only aspire to at present.

Rich countries should be saying: we will help you to grow faster
and to hold on to your best people through appropriate trade and
aid policies; we will also agree not to lure away your most skilled
people, so long as you agree to take back your illegal immigrants
(which many countries don't). The coalition government's
combination of a lower immigration target and its exemption of
the aid programme from cuts is an expression of this idea.

Another way in which a mutually beneficial "stay at home" policy
might operate is by professional and academic bodies in rich
countries encouraging more contact with counterparts in poor
ones. Academic and professional exchanges and other forms of
networking can help to reduce the isolation that many
professionals in poor countries feel.

An asylum system that is too open can also have the unintended
consequence of encouraging the most reform-minded people in
semi-authoritarian countries to quit rather than stay and fight for
change. When the UN Refugee Convention was established in
1951, the Soviet gulag was a reality and the Nazi genocide a
recent memory. The convention currently states that anyone is
entitled to asylum if they are being persecuted on grounds of
"race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social
group or political opinion". As Charles Clarke, the former Labour
home secretary, has observed: "These are wide-ranging
categories which, depending on your definition of persecution,
probably cover hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people
living in a world where international communications means that
more and more people are aware of their 'rights' and seek to take
them up." And human rights case law is gradually widening the
definitions.

But many of the largest groups, such as Somalis, applying to
enter Britain and other rich countries as refugees are not facing
individual persecution but rather are caught up in regional
conflicts or civil wars or even natural disasters. They have usually
been granted "exceptional leave to remain" or what is now called
"humanitarian protection". There is no reason why the leave to
remain should be permanent. Civil wars and natural disasters
come to an end and countries need rebuilding. Rich countries
should try to provide shelter from the storm for people badly
affected but then ensure they return to help that rebuilding. As it
is, refugees are often dumped in the poor parts of rich western
cities where they sometimes live segregated and unhappy lives
and can become a long-term welfare burden.

I would guess that 95% of British people think policy should give
priority to the interests of national citizens before outsiders
should the two conflict, but that does not mean you cannot be an
internationalist or think it's a valuable part of our tradition to give
a haven to refugees.

A new progressive "stay at home" contract can still appeal to
altruistic and charitable instincts in the west, but would work
with, and not against, the majority interest in both rich and poor
countries. Attracting so many of the world's brightest and best
into cities such as London seems an oddly lopsided way of
arranging global affairs. Surely it would be in the longer-term
interests of rich countries and poor to spread development more
evenly.

The bigger point here is the most basic insight of welfare
economics. Just as the marginal extra pound is worth more to a
poor person than to a rich person, so the educated and ambitious
person is worth more to a poor country that has few of them than
to a rich country that already has many.

Indeed, mass emigration from poor countries creates a kind of
development distortion, the human equivalent of global trade and
fiscal imbalances: the best-educated people leave countries that
badly need them for rich countries that can certainly benefit from
their arrival, but do not need them in any proper sense. Some
lucky people end up speeding up the development process for
themselves and their families while helping to slow it down for
everyone else back home.

What's so idealistic about that?

David Goodhart's The British Dream is published on 1 April by
Atlantic.